Cookin' at the Castello final excerpt: Persimmon Skillet Cake
There's less than 36 hours left to bid on the incredible array of prizes for this year's Menu for Hope campaign. At the time of this posting, we just crested over $40,000 smackeroos donated for this very worthy cause. But it takes a lot of money to feed a lot of hungry people, so keep bidding! I know I'm not done yet.
As you surely know by now, I am offering up one autographed copy of DPaul's and my homegrown cookbook, Cookin' at the Castello (prize code UW26), as well as one 8x10 glossy print of any image from the book itself. As a final enticement, I leave you with this, the last recipe in the book, for a seriously delicious persimmon skillet cake.
Last year, some friends inherited an enormous shopping bag full of ripe fuyu persimmons, which they promptly handed off to us. Subsequently, we baked off roughly a dozen of these cakes, bringing them to various holiday parties and whatnot. The spicy-sweet flavor of persimmons goes very nicely with the gingerbready cake, and though it has major wow factor, this cake is actually very easy to make.
This cake is modeled after the pear skillet cake that Sam's mom used to make at Bi-Rite when it first opened nearly a decade ago. We lived around the corner from the market then, and must have bought a few hundred of those cakes while she was cranking them out.
But there are oh, so many other lovely recipes in our book! Paella! Kofta! Possibly other things that end in 'a'! And an explanation of the meaning of the title, which will remain a mystery except to the winning bidder. Oh, the intrigue!
Of course, there are gobs of other amazing prizes to be bid upon. Yes, even more fabulous than ours:
- Sam at Becks & Posh outlines all the West Coast prizes -- nearly 50 of them! -- and lays out the odds of winning each. There are still quite a few that you have better-than-Vegas odds on, perfect for you timid gamblers (like me).
- Adam the Amateur Gourmet wrangles some three dozen East Coast prizes.
- The inimitable Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen corrals a collection of comestibles and other covetables from the land in between.
- Jasmine the Cardamom Addict cooks up a Canadian feast of cookbooks, chocolate and other goodies from our friends up north.
- Parisian expat David Lebovitz rounds up 35 tastes, tours and treats from Europe. I want all of them.
- Helen of Grab Your Fork wrestles with almost as many prizes from Asia, Australia and the Pacific as Sam does with the US West, and also plies us with odds.
- Because wine knows no boundaries, Alder at Vinography handles all the wine-related prizes, irrespective of geography. Cheers to that!
- The always delicious Sarah concocts a ThisNext shopcast of a smattering of prizes from the campaign.
- Kat the Kung Foodie wraps up a list of prizes that can be shipped anywhere in the world, neatly packaged in clever categories.
- Uberhostess with the mostest Chez Pim has the master list, if you want a one-stop shop.
You have until 6 pm PST tomorrow for your chance at any of these amazing prizes -- more than 200 to choose from. So what the hell are you waiting for? Go bid now! Full instructions after the jump.
- Go to the donation page at First Giving.
- Make a donation. Each $10 will give you one raffle ticket toward aprize of your choice. Please specify which prize(s) you'd like in the"Personal Message" section in the donation form when confirming yourdonation. If you are purchasing more than one ticket, be sure tospecify how many tickets per prize, using the prize code. The code forCookin' at the Castello is UW26.
- If your company matches your charitable donations, please rememberto check the box and fill in the information so we can claim thecorporate match.
- Please also check the box to allow us to see your email address sothat we can contact you in case you win. Your email will not be sharedwith anyone.
- Check back on Chez Pim on January 15 when we announce the results of the raffle.